


lookin' for a soul to steal

by AugustaByron



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Crack, Deal with a Devil, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustaByron/pseuds/AugustaByron
Summary: “I'm your guardian fucking angel, numnuts,” Shitty says. “Good job selling your soul."Jack sells his soul for hockey greatness. Bitty is the demon assigned to his case. Shitty did not prepare for this nonsense.





	lookin' for a soul to steal

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've had [redacted] Moscow Mules so this exists now. 
> 
> Title from: The Devil Went Down to Georgia 
> 
> Ngozi Ukazu owns Check, Please!

Shitty is waiting on the porch of the Haus when Jack comes home. He's frowning hugely, arms crossed over his chest, backlit so that he's just a dark silhouette. It would be a lot more effective, Jack thinks, if he was wearing anything more than a pair of white shorts. They are very, very short.

There is also the fact that Shitty doesn't live at the Haus until Marshy moves out, and that Jack didn't text anyone about when he'd be back. He pictures Shitty standing out here for a while, posed like that, and almost smiles. He sticks his hand, which is still tender and a little red, in his pocket before Shitty notices it, and stops at the bottom of the stairs.

“Brah,” Shitty says, in a deep, foreboding voice. “Tell me you are not enough of an idiot that you actually just sold your soul to the Devil for fucking ice hockey.”

The bottom of Jack's stomach drops. “How did you know?”

“Johnson called me. Dude. Are you serious?” Shitty jumps down the stairs and seizes Jack by the shoulders. “Man. What? Are you that upset about the playoffs still?”

“How did Johnson know?” Jack asks. His head is reeling. He didn't really expect it to work in the first place, he's still shaky about the encounter at the crossroads, and suddenly Shitty and Johnson know? Jack still isn't sure he knows, and his hand is still burning from that handshake.

“Johnson knows all, dude, he is Beyond Us. More importantly--” And Shitty punches Jack in the gut. Jack, not expecting it, almost falls down with the impact. “Are you the stupidest fuck on the face of the earth? It's just fucking hockey, Jack!”

There is no such thing as _just_ hockey, Jack wants to say, but he's pretty sure Shitty knocked the wind out of him. When did he get that strong?

“Oh, yeah, and--”

There is a pulse of bright, pure light. Jack winces away from it, temporarily blinded, and when he stops blinking the spots from his eyes, Shitty is still standing in front of him. Except now he's got a pair of enormous white wings.

“I'm your guardian fucking angel, numnuts,” Shitty says. “Good job selling your soul. Now what the actual hell are we going to do about this?”

 

The answer is, apparently, nothing. Shitty pushes away a thick, leather-bound book and sighs heavily. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, looking as tired as if he'd just come off a double overtime game, and Jack desperately wants to feel guilty. But--

If Shitty isn't bullshitting him—and the presence of the wings, which are still there, implies that he's not—then it's all true. The crossroads wasn't a hallucination. Jack is actually going to be the best in the world.

Oh shit, Jack realizes. He actually just sold his soul to the Devil.

“Okay,” Shitty says, maybe to Jack, maybe to himself. It's impossible to tell. He hasn't picked his head up off of his hands. “I've got nothing. Are you sure you gave him your full name?”

“Yes,” Jack says. The Haus is quiet around them. Jack hopes that none of the other boys come into the kitchen and see Shitty's giant angel wings. That might be a little hard to explain.

“Right. How many Jack Zimmermanns could there be in the world? And I guess it wouldn't be right to stick some poor fucker with the consequences of your deal anyway.” Shitty looks up and glares at Jack. It is much more effective now that he's got wings. “Why the hell did you do this? You didn't even try steroids first! I was prepared for steroids.”

Jack has an answer, of course he does. It's a long, rambling answer, which boils down to Samwell getting swept in the playoffs the same day that Kent fucking Parson clinched the Art Ross. There's also probably some father issues at work. His therapist would have a field day.

“Yeah, yeah,” Shitty says, like Jack answered aloud. “Fuck. Fuckity shit. Okay. Here's the plan: I am going to go see what kind of perks we can get you, and go over this with a fine tooth comb until I find a fucking loophole. I really have to go to law school now, you asshole. That was supposed to be a cover for disappearing after graduation.”

“Perks?” Jack wasn't aware that deals with the Devil came with perks. Now that he's sure it really happened, he figures he'll just play great hockey until he dies, and then suffer eternal torment or something.

“We are at least getting you a demon to oversee the working of the deal,” Shitty says. He slams his book of angel law shut and leans across the kitchen table. His wings bristle a little, and a long white feather falls off and drifts to the floor. Jack watches its progress until it lands, then makes himself focus on Shitty's face again.

“I'm sorry,” Jack says.

Shitty sighs again. “Yeah, whatever, you're Canadian. You're always sorry. Go to fucking bed, man, I have to call home.”

“Isn't your mom asleep by now?” Jack asks, confused.

“Yeah, that's not the home I'm talking about.” Shitty jerks a thumb towards the ceiling, and Jack abruptly understands. “And the heavenly choir it is not, let me tell you. Actually just my boss yelling at me for letting you sell your stupid soul.”

Jack doesn't know what to say to that. He gets up and almost starts walking away, when he has to stop again.

“I am sorry, Shits,” Jack says. Shitty finally, finally, smiles at him. He can feel the knots in his muscles relaxing, just like always. How the hell did Jack never notice that he had a guardian angel? There's nothing else that Shitty could have been.

“It's okay, bro,” Shitty say. “I'm going to fucking fix this.”

 

Weirdly, there is no mention of Jack's deal for the rest of the semester, or over the summer. Things go back to normal. Shitty still hangs out in Jack's room more than in his own dorm, mostly without enough clothes on. Jack goes back to Montreal for the break. He plods his way through _Faust_ , even though it doesn't seem very relevant.

Jack goes back to Samwell. He's getting in the right mindset for preseason. They've got to start strong. He hasn't seen any real difference in his offseason training from last year. He feels good, maybe stronger than last season. But that could just as easily be the new exercises his trainer has him doing. He's not seeing any demonic gains yet.

And with the team he's apparently got to work with--

“Bittle.” Jack recognizes him from the preseason roster that Coach Hall and Coach Murray sent him in the offseason. The boy—blond, tiny, and now surprised—looks up at him. “You need to eat more protein.”

Shitty catches up with him after team breakfast, pulls him off to the side of the sidewalk to mutter in Jack's ear, “That's him. Bitty. He's here to oversee your deal.”

And, oh. Shit.

 

Jack intends to be polite to the demon, but for fuck's sake. If the Devil is going to send a minion to make sure that Jack achieves hockey greatness, the demon had better not be such a goddamn liability on the ice. The kid keeps crumpling up whenever anyone gets near him, like he's afraid of getting hit.

“Isn't he a demon? Shouldn't he be used to pain?” Jack asks Shitty, near the boards, watching Bittle flop onto the ice again. He's starting to feel anger bubbling under his skin.

“It's different in a human body, bro,” Shitty says. “And if he's as new to the mortal plane as I think he is, he's never dealt with anything like it before.”

That's not Jack's problem, though. Bittle's on the team. Through some kind of Devil magic, undoubtedly, but he's here. So he's got to get it together.

Jack is not especially proud of the way he yells at the demon, but at least he manages to keep the supernatural stuff off the ice. He doesn't bring that up until later, when he goes back to the locker room to watch some more game tape and finds Bittle alone. He's in the hallway, staring at the trophy case with a strange look on his face.

“What the hell is your angle?” Jack hisses at Bittle, who jerks around, eyes wide. He doesn't look like a demon, that's for sure. “You need to get better quick if your boss wants to hold up his end of the bargain. And he seems like he takes deals seriously.”

Bittle slumps, shoulders coming up and head going down. “You met Coach, then,” Bittle mutters. “I wasn't sure if it was him or one of the assistants.”

“You call the Devil Coach?” Jack asks, and then remembers that he's here for a reason. He can't get sidetracked. “What are you doing on the team anyway? You couldn't supervise as just another student?”

“I wanted to play,” Bittle says, squaring up. Jack sees something powerful in him for the first time, and it's startling. “I wanted to try it all. There's so much here, and it's all so different.”

“Fine,” Jack says, disconcerted. “Just—get it together about checking.”

He beats a hasty retreat, leaving Bittle—the demon--standing there.

 

The really weird part, Jack realizes when he surfaces from preseason, is how much the other boys seem to like Bittle. Even Shitty, who Jack figured wouldn't want to spend any time with a demon, hangs out with him. Jack gets used to coming home to find a fresh pie in the kitchen, or Bittle on the couch playing drinking games to Golden Girls. Ransom and Holster fucking adore him, and Jack wonders if finding out Bittle is actually a demon from hell would make a difference to them at this point.

“Dude. Stop making everything about where he's from.” Shitty lets his wings out when they're alone, now. Jack is getting used to the feeling of them laying over him, blanketing him. They don't weigh as much as he thought they would, and the feathers are soft and smooth.

Right now he's buried underneath Shitty's wings while they lay on Jack's bed, half-watching a documentary.

“But he's a demon,” Jack points out. He gets that Bittle is nice, or whatever he wants to pretend, but it's not real. He's literally from hell.

“Yeah, but.” Shitty frowns at Jack and rolls over, wings rustling, to face him. “Look, okay, he's here because he wants to be. He wanted to be on earth, dude. There's a lot of things about Bitty that wouldn't fly down South, if you get my meaning.”

Jack considers. Shitty may have a point. But--

“He's still got to get better at hockey.”

Shitty laughs. “Sure, bro. I'll let him know.”

 

_That was a clutch shot, son._

Jack is fuming. This isn't what Bittle's here for. He's not here to make himself look good, to win games with beautiful goals. He's here to make sure that Jack gets what he wants.

And he's definitely not supposed to stand in the hall with a sweet-looking woman, calling her Mother, and charm Jack's fucking dad.

It's not okay.

Bittle is chattering at him, saying _thanks_ , and Jack is done.

“Bittle. It was a lucky shot. Magic or whatever you use.”

He doesn't turn around to see what Bittle looks like.

 

They put Bittle onto Jack's line, and he shouldn't be surprised. It's not like the coaches know that he's a demon. In some ways it even comes in handy. He's a speedy little fucker, that's for sure. Jack isn't sure if that's hellfire or what. He doesn't ask.

Jack’s playing _better._  And the way that Bittle slots in with the team, the way that the boys want him to be happy, the way he looks when Ransom and Holster start looking up guys to Screw him with--

And then Bittle's getting checked, and going down, and not getting back up.

Jack didn't expect to feel this way.

“How do demons even get concussions?” Jack asks. Bittle is lying on Shitty's bed, his head in Shitty's lap. Shitty is stroking his fingers through Bittle's hair. Jack watches, a little hypnotized. Shitty's got his wings out, blocking out the brightest rays from the afternoon sun. Jack walked in a second ago and found them this way.

It smells like weed in here. Shitty is smoking up with a demon.

“Brah,” Shitty says reproachfully, while Bittle makes a soft whimpering noise. Jack freezes, even though he's standing still.

“It's okay,” Bittle says. His voice comes out muffled because his face is squashed into Shitty's thigh. “I'm in a human body, Jack. I can get concussions same as you.”

Jack's next question, which was going to be how Samwell getting knocked out of the playoffs again satisfies Jack's deal, dries up in his throat. “But you're going to be okay?”

“Oh, sure,” Bittle says. “I'll go back home, get Coach to work on me a little, be right as rain by August.”

Well that's—good. Jack doesn't want to meet a new demon. Bittle's hard enough to handle as it is.

“You want in on this?” Shitty asks, lazy. He raises one wing to make room for Jack on the bed. It lets in more light, and Bitty's skin glows in the sunbeams. Which is probably dark magic or something.

Jack backs up a step. “I have to go. Sorry.”

As he leaves, he hears Bittle ask, “Why does he say sorry so much?”

Shitty laughs and replies, “Oh, Bitty. Let me explain some things to you that we who have been on earth a while call Canadianisms.”

 

Living with Bittle is—different. Jack didn't expect a demon to sing quite so many pop songs in the shower. Or to splash him with water, yelling about blasphemy, when Jack doesn't know who wrote whatever song it is. Maybe it's a singer from hell, or something. Some kind of sacred song to the Devil. Jack doesn't know why it talks so much about halos, then, though.

And then there's all the shit that just makes Bittle too fucking _nice_. He's too nice to be a hockey player. He's way too nice to be a minion of the Devil. Minions of the Devil wouldn't try to give out sweaters during initiation, or pack sack lunches for the frogs, or--

“Hey, you don't call Chowder your son because he's actually your son, right? Like in some kind of demon way?” Jack asks while he and Bittle are walking to class. Bittle made him go to Annie's first. Bitty's got one of those fancy lattes that he really shouldn't be drinking, even if he's not strictly human. Jack has a plain black coffee, like always.

Bittle looks at him like he's crazy and then laughs, long and loud enough to attract attention from passersby. Jack watches his dumb cute face. Dumb face. Just dumb.

“Oh, stars above, Jack! Sometimes I wonder if you're real.”

He doesn't answer the question, Jack notices.

 

When Shitty isn't writing his thesis or studying for the LSAT, he's reading and rereading Jack's contract, which Jack wasn't even aware existed in document form. Bittle apparently gave it to him, which Jack doesn't like to think about. The more time he spends with Bittle, the less he wants to consider where Bittle comes from, or what he's doing here.

It doesn't help that whenever Bittle mentions the Devil—Coach--he gets an unhappy, pinched look on his face.

“Fuck this,” Shitty moans into the contract. Lardo, sitting next to him on the couch, pats his shoulder absently. Jack isn't sure exactly if Lardo knows the situation. He's not sure if Lardo is actually human or not. He's trying to figure out how to ask. “I'm going to get Bitty to bake me something, I deserve it.”

“Dude,” Lardo says, looking up from her phone. “Bitty's seriously upset about some argument with his dad, don't bug him right now.”

Jack’s spine stiffens. “He's upset?”

“Maybe you should go check on him,” Lardo says. She's grinning at him, smug. Shitty joins in. They have a ridiculous theory about how Jack feels regarding Bittle, which is just stupid. It's not like Jack thinks--

Anyway, Bittle is on the team, and if he's not feeling a hundred percent then it will impact his game. That's why Jack goes up to Bitty's room and knocks softly on the door.

Bittle answers with red eyes and blotchy cheeks. Jack's stomach twists in on itself.

“Jack!” Bittle scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand and attempts a trembling smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Lardo said you were upset.” Jack isn't sure what else to say. He just knows that he does not like to see Bittle looking this way. He should always look happy, like he does when they're studying in the library together, or after Jack scores a goal with his assist, or--

“Oh! It's nothing, just a little disagreement with Coach.”

Two things dawn on Jack at the same time.

Oh shit, I like him, Jack thinks. I _like_ him. This is not good.

And--

“Coach is your _dad_?”

“Who did you think he was?” Bittle asks.

 

Shitty assembles what he's calling a war council.

It consists of Jack, Lardo, Ransom, and Holster. Plus Bitty, who is splitting his time between making pie crusts and answering Shitty's rapid-fire questions.

“So, you all just...know about this?” Jack asks, when it becomes apparent that nobody is going to explain anything.

“Bro,” Ransom says, injured. “Did you really think we weren't going to help Shitty get you out of this thing when we found out?”

“How did you find out, again?” Jack is deeply unclear about the specifics of the issue.

“Don't you remember at Winter Screw last year, when Rans and I were trying to find Bitty a date? He told us who he really was so we could work within some new parameters,” Holster says, peering at Jack over the top of his glasses.

“I thought that was about the gay thing,” Jack says, lost.

“No,” Ransom says.

“It was the demon thing,” Holster adds.

“So, that wasn't you coming out?” Jack asks Bittle, who shoots him an unimpressed look.

“Coach don't care about that. It's more about how I want to bake and not cause the rain of fire and all that sort of thing that's got him on my case. He thought handling your deal would get me to see the family business a little differently, and he's disappointed that it's not working.” Bitty chops butter into the dough with unnecessary roughness, and Jack's heart twinges a bit.

He's still stuck on the thing where Bittle's dad is the actual Devil, though.

“So why are you Southern?” Lardo asks, who apparently did not know until just now. She's taking it with good grace. “If you're from hell. You're always talking about Georgia, anyway.”

“Well,” Bittle says, drawing out the word. The back of his neck is turning red. “After Mama beat Coach in that fiddle contest, he would have done anything to get her to marry him. So he kind of—moved hell to Georgia. It's hard to explain. There's a lot of stuff with different planes of existence going on.”

They all sit for a second and let that settle over them. Then--

“I always said the deep South was hell on earth,” Shitty says. “I just never knew I was so right.”

Jack gets kicked out of future war councils. Shitty claims he is detrimental to the process.

The thing is, Jack made the deal. He shook the Devil's hand and promised up his soul in return for hockey greatness. It seemed like a good idea at the time—Jack only cared about hockey at the time, and was twisted up with the idea that he'd never really _win_. The deal is going to fix that, and Jack agreed to those terms. So he can't feel right about trying to wiggle out of it now.

Instead, he just plays hockey. And he's doing pretty well. Teams are interested the way they haven't been in years. Not a lot of teams, but enough. Jack's got options, and it feels--

Good. Jack is feeling _good_. The way he never thought he would feel again.

They get knocked out of the Frozen Four, and Bittle is _there_ , in the tunnels, with big dark eyes and Bittle’s hands are warm even through Jack’s hockey pads, somehow.

Bittle came to find him. Jack’s not sure if anyone’s ever come to find him. After games in Peewee, his mom would drive him home and turn the radio to the news, pretend not to see Jack’s hands clenching into fists in the passenger seat, give him some kind of privacy. Bittle comes to find him.

Bittle is laughing at a kegster, Bittle is looking up at him with soft eyes after Jack drapes a jacket around his shoulders, Bittle is--

 _Go really say goodbye_.

Jack kisses Bitty. There’s really no other choice.

The Devil’s never been further away.

 

Going down to Madison for the 4th of July is the most nerve-wracking thing that Jack’s ever done, and he’s including telling his parents that he’s bi and meeting Shitty’s not-parents at graduation. (Angels. Actual angels. Jack’s brain is still refusing to process it.)

But Georgia is hot, and sticky, and, oh, yeah, _full of demons_.

The Devil--Coach--has a mustache and a warm smile. His hand is callused and work-rough, when he shakes Jack’s. The last time Jack met him, he was sheathed in fire and brimstone, so it’s surprising to see him look like, well, Bitty’s dad.

“Well, son,” the Devil says, smiling down at him, “I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“I hope it was all good, sir,” Jack says, automatically, like those dark eyes didn’t already scan over the deepest parts of him and decide if he was worth anything or not.

“More than good, according to my boy,” Coach says, and chuckles. “Course, if I’d known what Junior was going to get up to, I’d’ve put some more conditions on that deal of yours. What a way to win a soul, huh?”

“Um,” Jack says. “Excuse me.”

Bitty squirms a little, and Jack most definitely does not find it attractive.

“Well,” Bitty says, “If I’d’ve known how easy it was to claim you, I could’ve spared Shitty a lot of grief! You actually might want to talk to my mama about how it all works. She had a real competition that she won, you just got by on photography and blue eyes.”

Jack’s starting to get it. Excuse him if he’s smirking. “So you won me.”

“Jack Zimmermann,” Bitty says, bright and open and all Jack’s, “you’re the one who won this.”

No arguments here, Jack decides, as he leans down to kiss his demon.

 

“Brah,” Shitty says, reproachful, when Jack gets around to calling. “You could’ve at least let me know. I’m locked into Harvard for three years. Sallie Mae knows no dimension or earthly bounds.”

“Sorry, man.” Jack looks down at the other half of the bed, where Bitty is resting, wearing only Jack’s shirt. He hasn’t figured out yet if Bitty’s got some kind of infernal link to Jack’s deepest desires, or if he’s just _like that_. Jack’s kind of hoping for the hellfire option. The rest of his life will be too stressful otherwise. “It all just--happened.”

Slowly, and wonderfully, and like a ton of bricks.

“Well, I checked, and your soul is back where it should be. Apparently true love negates any of the shady shit. But if you ever decide to sell your soul again, check if there’s a money back guarantee, we’re not gonna get lucky twice..”

“Will do,” Jack promises. It’s all moot anyway. Jack’s pretty sure his soul belongs to Bitty now.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
